News stories from Friday May 20, 1977

Summaries of the stories the major media outlets considered to be of particular importance on this date:

Higher food prices were the major factor in another big cost-of-living increase in April of eight-tenths of 1 percent, the Labor Department said. But administration economists said they expected food prices to decline in the second half or the year and prices to be more moderate. [New York Times] President Carter's political legislation has run into trouble in Congress that is embarrassing for Democratic leaders and their labor allies, but it might not be fatal to the program. The two more politically palatable parts of the package, Election Day registration and restoring to most federal employees the right to engage in politics, have been delayed in the House. If these bills cannot win substantial House majorities soon, prospects for the more controversial Carter programs are dim. [New York Times] His intermittent political offensive against the Carter administration was resumed by former President Ford. He told reporters in Washington that the Carter economic program, especially its energy aspects, had lost confidence in the business community, and "the odds are overwhelming" that President Carter would not fulfill his pledge to balance the federal budget by 1981. Mr. Ford also said that the Nixon-Frost interviews "convinced me even more" that he had done "the right thing" in pardoning the former President. [New York Times] Japanese exports of color TV sets to the United States will be substantially reduced under an agreement signed in Washington by Japan's Ambassador, Fumihiko Togo, and Robert Strauss, President Carter's special representative for trade negotiations. The agreement was negotiated over a seven-week period under deadline pressure to head off a possible five-fold increase in American tariffs on imports of television sets. [New York Times] Stock prices began to weaken early in the session with the news that the government's Consumer Price Index had risen in April, The Dow Jones industrial average, which made no gains during the session, closed down 6.02 points to 930.46. Declining stocks outnumbered rising ones by 7 to 5. Blue-chip stocks were hardest hit. [New York Times] Organized crime is trying to capitalize on the pending casino gambling business in Atlantic City, law enforcement authorities say. "We have encountered a general incursion by organized crime in the Atlantic City area," said Michael Siavage, executive director of the New Jersey State Commission of Investigation. [New York Times] Gen. Lewis Hershey, who supervised the draft of 14.5 million Americans in three wars, died on a visit to his home town of Angola, Ind. He was 83 years old. When he retired in 1973, he was the oldest military man on active duty. He was to have attended graduation today at his alma mater, Tri-State University. [New York Times] The United States would be forced to take diplomatic steps against South Africa, Vice President Mondale warned Prime Minister John Vorster at their meeting in Vienna, if he did not start a "progressive transformation" of his country's white supremacist policies. Mr. Vorster, however, remained adamant in his refusal to make any changes in South Africa's status quo. [New York Times] An agreement on a formula for ending the impasse in the strategic arms limitation talks was reached in Geneva by Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko of the Soviet Union. The agreement, announced by American officials, followed three days of talks. The officials stressed that further negotiations would be needed to conclude the text of the new treaty. [New York Times] A state-financed drug treatment agency in Manhattan was accused of having spent funds on "extremely puzzling and disturbing" expenditures in the stock market, on high rents and on an air-conditioned Buick for its president. The charges against Logos Center, headed by Ronald Myles, were contained in report made public by Assemblyman Charles Schumer, Democrat of Brooklyn. [New York Times] Nearly $124 million will be repaid to shareholders in the four mutual funds operated by Investors Overseas Services that had been controlled by Robert Vesco, the fugitive financier. Recovery of the money had been sought by the New York law firm of Anderson Russell Kill & Olick on behalf of three Luxembourg liquidators of the International Investment Trust, the largest of the four so-called I.O.S. Dollar Funds. The law firm said the settlement was the "largest single cash recovery in the history of securities frauds," but that the amount to be repaid did not include the $100 million that Mr. Vesco had been charged with stealing. [New York Times] A victory was won by Joan Irvine Smith, who had fought nearly 20 years for control of the Irvine Company, which owns the vast ranch in California assembled by her grandfather and which had been in the hands of the Irvine Foundation, a charitable organization. Taubman-Allen-Irvine Inc?, a consortium of investors that includes Mrs. Smith and Henry Ford II, outbid the Mobil Corporation for control of the Irvine Company and its 70,000 undeveloped acres in Orange County south of Los Angeles. [New York Times]

Stock Market Report

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 930.46 (-6.02, -0.64%)
S&P Composite: 99.45 (-0.43, -0.43%)
Arms Index: 1.05

	Issues	Volume*
Advances	592	6.37
Declines	797	9.04
Unchanged	493	3.54
Total Volume		18.95

* in millions of shares

Arms Index is the ratio of volume per declining issue to volume per advancing issue; a figure below 1.0 is bullish.

Market Index Trends
Date	DJIA	S&P	Volume*
May 19, 1977	936.48	99.88	21.28
May 18, 1977	941.91	100.30	27.80
May 17, 1977	936.48	99.77	22.29
May 16, 1977	932.50	99.47	21.17
May 13, 1977	928.34	99.03	19.78
May 12, 1977	925.54	98.73	21.98
May 11, 1977	926.90	98.78	18.98
May 10, 1977	936.14	99.47	21.09
May 9, 1977	933.90	99.18	15.23
May 6, 1977	936.74	99.49	19.37